


A Good Shooting

by pwcorgigirl



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 20:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6344419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pwcorgigirl/pseuds/pwcorgigirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Wilson has an unexpected visitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Shooting

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LiveJournal Slash Challenge: Positively House/Wilson because I like to surprise people. Rated for mid-teens and up for non-explicit sex. 1,475 words. AU.

Wilson looked up, the corpse laid out before him like a gutted deer, when the door to the autopsy room swung open with a bang. 

The man leaning into the open doorway was tall, his hair a silvering shock above a lined face. His lean body was tilted slightly to the right and grounded by an ebony cane he was gripping tightly, his knuckles in white relief beneath his skin. 

“It was a good shooting,” the unexpected visitor said. His voice was gruff, and Wilson suspected he could put a lot of power into a shout, but his tone was low and urgent. 

Wilson put down the rib shears. “He was shot three times.” 

“Right calf, left thigh, both just grazes, trying to get him to stop,” the man said. 

“Center mass the third time,” Wilson added. 

“Making sure he stopped, since he was firing on me at the time.”

The man's face was white and Wilson's gaze dropped as he quickly inspected his body. There was a slit up the right side of his trouser leg and a glimpse of white bandage around his thigh. A hospital bracelet had slid down his wrist below the cuff of his shirt. 

“He shot you?” Wilson stripped off his bloody gloves and stepped around the table. 

“Whoa, doc. Not ready for your kind of help yet,” the man said. “He was high as a giraffe's ass. A nine mil slug to each leg and he never even broke stride. Run the tox screen before I get hung out to dry for violating his civil right to kill me.”

“Sure,” Wilson said. “You are?”

“Detective House. Greg House. First Division.” He started to turn and grimaced, then fished a card from his jacket pocket and handed it to Wilson. “Call me when the results are in.” 

He was gone when Wilson looked up from the card.

\---

Wilson ran the tox screen and even threw in a few screens not routinely run, just so that all the bases were covered. The honchos upstairs would scream at the cost and he'd justify it. He was a smooth talker when he wanted to be, at least that's what Kevin had said before he'd packed his bags and left their bed forever. It was probably the least insulting thing one of his lovers had ever said as parting words. Conner's had been unprintable, and Lee had accused him of being married to his work and actually cried.

But then Lee had always been soft. It was what had first attracted Wilson to him, but it didn't wear well in the long run. 

The man who'd stood in his doorway on a gunshot leg wasn't soft. Not one bit, and Wilson couldn't get him out of his head as he read the print-outs. The shooter had been fully tanked up on coke and meth – talk about a lethal combination – with a chaser of Ecstasy. 

_High as a giraffe's ass indeed,_ Wilson thought.

\---

“Detective House is on medical leave. We're not sure when or if he's going to be able to come back,” the division secretary said. “He was shot and there were complications later.”

It took Wilson a little asking around, which was easy for him because he got on well with all the cops whose work brought them to the morgue, but he eventually found House in Intensive Care in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. 

He flashed his Police Medical Examiner I.D. card at House's doctor and said something deliberately vague about investigating House's shooting. That's all it took for the young doctor to open House's medical records. 

Wilson quickly read the story: a clot, an infarction, cardiac arrest, severely damaged kidneys, and debridement surgery of a terrifying scope to remove the dead muscle in House's thigh. 

“He's heavily sedated,” Dr. Cuddy said. “His kidney function has improved slightly since the surgery. With a lot of support, he might make it.” 

“He's probably never going to walk again,” Wilson said. “This ends his career.”

She was so young, and looked so infinitely sad. “It was not an easy call, Dr. Wilson. We were trying to balance saving his life and saving his leg. He was adamant that we not amputate. We did the best we could.” She closed the file and turned away. 

“Wait. Is his family here?” 

“He doesn't have any. There's no one here for him,” she replied as she walked away. 

Wilson called in sick for the first time in years and took up a spot in the ICU waiting room. He was there during evening visiting hours, a precious ten minutes of time, when House's eyes opened. 

“Oh, Christ,” House rasped. “I'm dead.” 

“Not quite,” Wilson said. He reached for the glass of water on the side table and held the straw steady for House to take a sip. “Go slow or you'll barf.” 

Of course House, whose throat was dry and sore, didn't listen, with the expected result, and Wilson mopped up the mess with a spare patient gown. He wiped runny vomit from House's hand, and that long hand unexpectedly gripped his. 

“Why?” House asked. His eyes were cloudy, both from pain and the dose of morphine that was taking hold of his nervous system. 

“You asked me to help you,” Wilson said. “So here I am.”

“You're an idiot,” House said, but the words came out slurred and soft, almost a term of endearment.

\---

Somehow, Wilson just kept on staying. He was there when House was released from the hospital and took him home to his apartment.

He was there when House was cleared of the shooting and received the papers in the mail informing him that he'd been placed on long-term disability and would receive full retirement when it ran out. 

House flicked the papers onto the cluttered coffee table. “A grateful community thanks you for your sacrifice and blah-de-blah-blah sorry about your leg.” 

“A good shooting,” Wilson said. “They agreed with you.”

“You helped. But in the end, they had to. No fair dogpiling the crippled cop.” House fished in his shirt pocket and pulled out the bottle of pain pills that he kept there. His eyes were bleak, and he looked away as he shook the bottle to assess how many tablets were left. 

Nothing, Wilson thought, could kill that kind of pain. 

He stayed. And he saw House doggedly relearn how to walk, and how he learned to cope with the change that threw his body off center and made almost everything different and difficult. So maybe sometimes he could forgive House for mixing his painkillers, even as he kept count of the pills and had a vial of Narcan in his briefcase for reversing an overdose. 

He was there one night, when he reached across the space between them, took the glass from House's hand, and embraced him, with all the hard angles of House's bones cradled in his arms. 

“Why?” House asked, his voice soft against Wilson's ear.

“Because I love you,” Wilson replied. And it was one night that House needed no help getting to the bed, when House stripped off his clothes and Wilson's, and he let Wilson touch him everywhere, not even flinching when Wilson laid his hand over the crater of scar in his leg. 

“Don't say it doesn't matter,” House said. 

“I know,” Wilson said. “It does, but not with this. Not with me.” And he was astonished at the ferocity of House's kiss, at the strength and speed and dexterity of how he moved on top of and under Wilson, as if the bed was an arena and the contest a perfect match. 

Deep in the night, with the room still smelling of salt and semen, with House's mauled leg slung over his hip, Wilson fell asleep. In the night, he turned in House's arms and awoke to the first light of day illuminating the window shades and House spooned against him, their bare skin chilled by the night air. He pulled up the blanket to warm them both, and lay still, watching the room grow lighter as the sun rose. 

“This is not going to be easy,” House suddenly said. His morning voice was a low rumble, like truck tires running slow on a gravel road. 

“ _You're_ not easy,” Wilson said. “You showed up in my autopsy suite with a gunshot wound the first time I met you, and vomited on me the second time. Don't you think I know what I'm getting into?” 

He felt the laugh, rising from deep in House's chest, before he heard it, and smiled into the brightening room.

The End


End file.
